Chapter 8 – Attrition

•••

Conor’s forty-seventh monkey jump was very nearly his last.

He was tired—on the verge of collapse, really, his limbs trembling, a hair-trigger cough lurking in the back of his throat—and to compensate, he’d leapt from the column with every scrap of power he could muster.

(Better to make it, even if it meant a heavy landing, than to kamikaze straight into the unforgiving corner where the wall met the pavement.)

But he’d underestimated his obstinate muscles, had overshot and come in too high, his momentum driving his feet toward a point just barely below the top of the wall—and to make matters worse, he had reflexively leaned back, positioning his legs to take the impact as he would for a target jump, leaving his hands to grab at nothing.

Oh, fu—

Rebounding, he fell, twisting frantically in the air as the ground rushed up toward him. A series of impacts occurred in quick succession—

—his shoe, the concrete—

—his palm, the concrete—

—his hip, the concrete—

—his shoulder, the concrete—

—and he disappeared into a blank whiteout of pain and shock.

For long, long seconds, there was nothing. Awareness returned in steps, the wash of agony draining away into bright, narrow rivers of pain, which gradually deposited their contents into a handful of deep pools scattered across his body.

Oh god how bad is it is it broken did I break my wrist my hip did I hit my head what if I can’t walk—

With a feeling like slamming a door, Conor shut off the flood, steering his mind away from panic, from damage assessment, from conscious thought of any kind.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Four breaths, then five—ten—by the time he lost count, his higher self had reasserted control, was calm enough to open his eyes, shift his head. He was lying on his side on the pebbled concrete, halfway between the wall and the column, and there was no blood.

(Not on the outside, anyway.)

He wiggled his fingers and toes, more relieved than he cared to admit when they responded without hesitation. Gingerly, glacially, he rolled over onto his back, lightning dancing around his body but never quite striking home. Ignoring the protests of his overworked muscles, he sat up, pulling his heels underneath him and wrapping his arms around his knees.

Lucky.

He was lucky. His head seemed fine—there was no nausea or dizziness, and he felt nothing out of the ordinary when he ran a hand through his hair. His shoulder, hip, and wrist were ablaze with pain, but it was thick and uniform, without the sharpness he remembered from when he’d broken his radius in elementary school. A dozen steps and a handful of cautious shrugs confirmed it—he was hurt, he was bruised, but he wasn’t broken. Only his wrist seemed genuinely injured—it was the same one he’d tweaked the night before, and the double trauma was bad enough that moving it brought tears to his eyes. Even so, though, there was only a little swelling, with no indication that he’d done any worse than sprain it.

Idiot.

A part of him had known that he was making a mistake, that he should have stopped after ten—after five, even—that he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He had rules about this sort of thing—rules that would have saved him, if he’d bothered to follow them.

But Conor had not come for rules, was not there to be safe. Was not even there for the monkey jump, really—had come instead for the fear, the exhaustion—for the chance to beat himself up, wear himself down, dash himself to pieces and sink into oblivion.

He’d come to disappear.

But he was back, now, the pain like a leash, tethering him to reality. Somehow—

(He had no memory of how, none whatsoever.)

—somehow, he had made it home the night before, had blinked and found himself pacing the space between his desk and his bed at four thirty in the morning, unsure whether he had slept, unnervingly unsure whether he was sleeping. The world had been strangely not quite there, as drink-muffled dullness gave way to livewire jitters. His mind had buzzed, his muscles had buzzed—even his skin had seemed to buzz, somehow, as if the air in the room were charged with static.

Did that really happen of course it happened what do you think you made it up or something are they going to arrest me nobody saw you Ashleigh saw me no he didn’t that was before—

His thoughts had run wild, looping back on themselves, lurching suddenly in new directions, sometimes drying up entirely for long, long seconds before bursting forth in sudden flood.

Why would he do that why did I do that that was crazy that was awesome that can’t have been real he just kept crying he just kept screaming well you broke his shoulders why did he KISS me—

He had felt himself spinning, spiraling—had sensed, somehow, that some critical guard rail was missing. That he was losing himself, losing his grip—that his thoughts were wobbling further and further away from familiar territory—that the mental landscape he usually traveled was tiny, insignificant, a mere oasis of sanity, and the untraveled wilds his mind was capable of reaching were vaster than he had ever suspected, a yawning, incoherent void.

This must be what Ashleigh felt like, when he—

(Flinch.)

The snap of the high schooler’s collarbone, the shriek like a tortured animal—

The rapist, you mean.

This must be what Batman—

Batman isn’t real!

Guyler’s blood on the sidewalk, Ashleigh’s breath hot on his face—

He lied to me. He’s been lying to me for—since—why didn’t he TELL me—

Ms. Palmano’s voice, low and sultry like he imagined when he locked his bedroom door, tickling in his ear, shiveringly close—The first step in taking control of your life is realizing that you already have it—

I did it it was real I finally did it I stopped a bad guy was it what you wanted no are you sure yes isn’t this what you were hoping for training for what did you think was going to happen let me take it back please let me take it back—

And under and through and over it all, the fear—that he felt like he was going crazy because he was going crazy, that this was exactly how people went about losing their minds. It wasn’t like there was any special reason why he, Conor Moreton, couldn’t go crazy, if there was nothing stopping Ashleigh from—

(Flinch.)

And over and over, in a kind of short-circuit:

I have to talk to him.

Ashleigh. He had to talk to Ashleigh.

But I can’t he won’t let me he ran he didn’t stop well you didn’t stop him what was I supposed to do I don’t know maybe anything at all—

Eventually—

(Six A.M.? Wasn’t it four-thirty, like, TWO minutes ago?)

—eventually, some frightened part of him had gathered enough strength to hack its way through the static, to scream at him that he had to do something, that he could not just stay in this room by himself while his sanity boiled away. His hand was on the door handle—

Parents.

He’d gone back to scribble a note, registered that his bedsheets were flat and unconvincing—

So I didn’t sleep, then.

—had rumpled them and then left, the newborn November sky still fully dark, his breath misting, the scattered Halloween decorations seeming to squirm and slither whenever he wasn’t staring straight at them.

(The crunch of bone, a scream that went on and on and on and on—)

(Flashing lights, Guyler’s blood on his hands—)

(What’s the matter, Bat-boy? What’s the matter, what’s the matter, what’s the matter, what’s the matter—)

And then finally: the plaza, its familiar shapes eerie in the buzzing yellow light, everything somehow colder and harder and sharper, the walls carved from ice. Conor had hauled himself up onto the column, praying—

—and mercifully, the world had snapped back into focus, drawn in its wings and settled, shrunk, solidified. His first jump had pulled him halfway back to sanity, and the second halfway again, the wildness slowly receding as tangible reality reasserted itself.

And then he had pushed too far, and fallen, and that, too, had been healing, somehow—had reminded him that the infinite void he had touched was just that, the void, there was a reason people didn’t cross the yellow lines on the road and it was because that was crazy.

Crazy.

(He had heard the phrase go crazy a million times before, but this was the first time he’d understood that crazy was in fact a place he could go.)

Conor could still feel it, the gut-drop sense of awful possibility, the wide-open anythingness just a few steps away. But the ache in his body had anchored him, and he was grateful for it.

There’s a billion—no, more, a trillion—no, a, a, a whatchamacallit, a googolplex—

There were an almost infinite number of ways that he himself could be—countless rearrangements of the atoms that made up his body—but only a few of those—

(A very, very few.)

—added up to anything like a boy named Conor Moreton. Most of them added up to nothing at all. Just a pile of matter, empty, meaningless.

(It was a strange thought, still touched with the wildness of the sleepless night, and almost too grownup—like the sort of thing his mind produced when he was trying to impress Ms. Palmano. But it fit, somehow, and as he turned it over and over in his mind, he felt the last pieces of himself jostling back into place, felt the craziness fade and was himself again.)

Which…

…wasn’t great, actually, given the circumstances.

The first question, he said to himself—

(Slowly, buying time to think as he began the long walk back to the neighborhood, limping only a little.)

The first question is…

He waited.

The sentence refused to finish itself.

Eh. Worth a shot.

It was the voice of his shoulder Ashleigh, and upon hearing it, some small part of Conor relaxed, unclenched, realizing only in that exact moment that he’d been afraid that somehow the voice in his head would have fled, too—that this time he wouldn’t even have the pale echo of his friend’s memory to comfort him.

…I don’t think it works like that?

Yeah, sure, fine, that was obvious now.

But anyway, isn’t the first question “where did I go?”

Conor stopped walking.

I mean, either way, right?

Either way. Whichever came first, talking about—that, or—or that—

Either way, Ashleigh—

(The real Ashleigh.)

—Ashleigh was where the conversation would happen. Was, himself, the other half of it.

Okay, Conor thought.

Okay.

But…shouldn’t he figure out what he was actually going to say, first?

I mean…

(Ashleigh’s voice again.)

…it’s a long walk, isn’t it?

•••

“No, he isn’t here.”

Conor blinked, feeling like he’d tried to climb a dozen steps only to find that there were actually just eleven.

Mrs. Falhanner stood in the driveway, the car door hanging open beside her, her purse still dangling from her shoulder. She had the look of someone who had only been home for a few moments, and not to rest—there were dark bags under her eyes, and her makeup was cracked.

She had been coming out of the front door of the house as Conor rounded the corner, had seemed not to see him—or at least, had locked the door behind herself and walked straight down the brick steps and to her car without pausing, only turning to look up when he’d called out to her.

“Do you know when he’s coming back?” Conor asked. “I—”

—need to talk to him, were the words that had almost slipped out of his mouth. But repeated experience had taught him not to use words like need with the sort of grownup who didn’t buy that a kid could need anything.

(That, and there was something new in the way she was looking at him, some subtle strangeness that he did not recognize and could not decode.)

“—thought we were going to meet up at the Plaza, but he wasn’t there.”

Mrs. Falhanner stood unmoving, her tired eyes fixed on his, her face still set in that unsettling, unfamiliar shape. “You can text him,” she offered flatly. “Or call.”

Conor opened his mouth, paused. “Uh.”

Saying I already did that, he didn’t answer suddenly didn’t seem like a good idea. Somewhere in the back of his mind, some part of him was raising a wordless warning—

She hadn’t answered his question about when Ashleigh would be back.

She hadn’t answered his question in the specifically unhelpful way that Conor himself didn’t-answer questions he did not want to answer, from people he had no intention of helping…

Mrs. Falhanner shifted, a sort of pointedly intentional motion, her keys jingling loudly, and Conor realized he was standing still with his mouth open like he was trying to catch flies.

“Right,” he said.

He drew his phone from his pocket. Ashleigh’s mother just watched, silent, inscrutable.

Scruted your MOM last—

Feeling a bead of sweat forming on the back of his neck, Conor sent a quick message.

Seconds passed.

“No answer?” Mrs. Falhanner asked, her voice crisp.

“Uh,” he said again.

“Guess he’s not available, then,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, Conor, I need to get to work. You boys will have to catch up later.”

She gestured—a sharp, authoritative motion—and Conor backpedaled, falling away until his shoes found the damp, untrimmed grass beside the driveway. Bending into the car, Ashleigh’s mother shut the door, started the engine, threw one last unreadable look over her shoulder, and then backed down the driveway and disappeared around the corner.

That…

Conor stared after her, his thoughts confused and sluggish. He felt the way he did when Mrs. Atkins called on him to answer a question he hadn’t even heard—had the sense that something had just happened—

No, scratch that—something had definitely just happened, it wasn’t just a sense. But he had no idea what. He had called out to her with—with a flow, of sorts—a plan, if only the most basic kind—is Ashleigh here? No? Okay, then, on to the next place—

But the look in Mrs. Falhanner’s eyes, that strangely empty quality in her voice…she had looked at Conor like—like—

Like she didn’t like me very much.

The way Eddie sometimes looked at him, or Eichardt. Except—

Except she was a grownup, that wasn’t the sort of look grownups gave kids, and besides, she did like him, she always had, she was warm and friendly and welcoming, even when she was tired, even when he and Ashleigh were in trouble—

He paused, his throat tightening.

Could Ashleigh have told her? About—

No. No way.

(But he didn’t sound very sure, even to himself.)

And then an even stranger thought—

Could she have been lying?

Grownups lied all the time, of course. Conor knew that. Everyone knew that. They lied about time, about food, about money, about sex. About anything that would embarrass them, or make them wrong—anything that might pierce the illusion of competence that they honestly seemed to think they were maintaining.

But they didn’t—

Conor squinted at his own thought, suspicious.

They didn’t lie like people.

They didn’t lie personally—not that he’d ever noticed.

Except—

Except of course they did, it was an odd way to think about Mrs. Falhanner but she was a person, Conor wasn’t used to thinking of his best friend’s mother in those terms but of course she was a person, of course she had thoughts and opinions and—and goals, things that she wanted, things that were every bit as real and important to her as Conor’s goals were to himself, the way she lived her life was ridiculous and incomprehensible just like every other grownup but that didn’t make her not a person.

Which meant that maybe Ashleigh was inside the house.

(Because she was mad at him, somehow—it was hard to picture a grownup being, like, actually properly mad at a kid, as opposed to just Disappointed or whatever, but if Ashleigh really had told her, or—or if she’d just sort of picked up on it, somehow—)

Conor looked down at his phone.

If he won’t answer your text, he’s not going to open the—

The sound of a door opening made Conor jump.

It was Timothy, looking down from the landing, his face taut, eyes wide and slightly wild beneath a brow drawn down like a knight’s visor.

“Is Ashl—”

“No,” the younger boy said, cutting him off. “What happened?”

“What?”

“What happened last night?”

The boy’s voice matched his eyes, and the set of his shoulders—tense, pressured, slightly accusing. Conor blinked, shook his head, tried to force his thoughts back on track, kick his battered brain into gear.

“I,” he began, before giving up and starting over with “He,” only to scrap that as well, finally settling on “What do you mean?”

Timothy’s eyes narrowed, the hint of wildness kindling into fire. “Don’t fuck with me,” he growled. “Something happened. Last night. And you know what it was.”

For a split second, Conor felt an impulse to laugh.

You think I know what happened just because I was there?

“He came home last night?”

“Around two in the morning. Drunk. Really drunk. He had scratches all over his hands, and his clothes were all torn up. He threw up twice. I had to wash the—look, fuck, Conor, what happened?”

“Where is he?”

“You tell me!”

(Mrs. Falhanner hadn’t been lying, then.)

“When did he leave?”

“Maybe an hour ago. Before Mom got home. Conor. What. Happened.”

Conor opened his mouth, hesitated—

Probably should’ve come up with a story ahead of time, huh.

What could he say? What could he say that definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent would not count as a betrayal?

“He didn’t tell you?” Conor asked cautiously.

“The fuck you think I’m asking for, fun?” Timothy seethed. “He didn’t say anything. Not a single goddamn word. And he—he looked like he’d been crying again, it was hard to tell with how smashed he was, but—”

“If he didn’t want to tell you—”

Slam.

The rest of the sentence popped like a bubble as Timothy flung the door shut behind himself so hard the house shook. He stalked down the steps—crossed the driveway—came right up into Conor’s face as if trying to loom over him from below.

“He is my brother,” the younger boy hissed. “My brother. And something happened last night, and whatever it was—whatever it was, Conor, it fucked him up worse than I’ve ever seen him, I thought I was going to have to take him to the hospital.”

The younger boy reached up, slowly, as if to grab Conor by his shirt, or maybe his neck—

—but the fingers twitched, curled, and two tight fists sank slowly back down to his sides.

(Conor began breathing again.)

“And now he’s gone, and—and you know why, and I don’t know—I don’t care—whatever it is that’s going on between the two of you, you are going to tell me right now because he’s my brother.”

Quiet, where the younger boy would usually shout. Slow, where the words would normally tumble over one another. Glacially cold—

No. Not cold.

A laser, the fire compressed, controlled, hammered down into a narrow beam, giving off no heat. Timothy’s eyes burned into Conor’s and Conor searched, scrabbled, scrambled—digging through his exhausted mind for some way, some words to say, something he could offer the younger boy that wouldn’t mean crossing a line he couldn’t uncross—

But there was nothing.

(Or if there was something, Conor was too stupid and tired to find it.)

“I don’t know, Timothy,” he said, his own voice equally quiet. “We were on the roof at East Binder, and Ashleigh—there was—he tried to do a thing and he got, um. Scared. He got scared and he ran off and I—”

Conor swallowed.

“I don’t know what happened after that.”

•••

I don’t know what happened after that.

The words haunted Conor as he walked, as he searched, crisscrossing the city and the wilderness around it.

Ashleigh wasn’t at the railyard.

He wasn’t at the culvert.

He wasn’t at the mall, or the playground, or the park.

He wasn’t at Nolan’s, or Eddie’s, or Holt’s.

He wasn’t even at school—after nearly three hours of wandering, Conor had finally caved and gone back, had even gone all the way up to the auditorium roof. But there was nothing there except two narrow paths in the gravel and the empty bottle that Ashleigh had dropped.

And so, dirty and aching and more tired than he’d ever been in his life, with only the pain in his wrist keeping him from falling asleep on his feet, Conor turned back toward home.

If only.

If only Conor had gone with him.

Or stopped him.

Or said anything at all.

A shower.

He needed a shower, and sleep, simple things, now-things, things that would keep him tethered here, in the present—

Like your parents?

He winced. He knew he would not be able to dodge them, not without more of an effort than he was currently capable of. It was going to be a problem—he knew it would be a problem if they caught him, if they started asking questions—but there was nothing to be done about it. His universe had shrunk to the size of his next five steps, his vocabulary reduced to tiny, atomic chunks like bed and pillow and totally fucked.

(And Ashleigh, of course—even in his stumbling fugue, the other boy never left his thoughts for long. But those thoughts didn’t go anywhere.)

(His fingers brushed absently across his lips, remembering.)

By the time he reached his driveway, Conor had gone beyond shuffling and was almost staggering, his movements stiff and zombie-like. He had walked at least ten miles—had scaled fences, crawled through bushes, taken shortcuts through ditches and alleys and cluttered back lots. He paused for a moment to consider his reflection in the window of his mother’s car—

No point.

Feeling each and every muscle and every single bruise on top of them, he dragged himself into the garage and up the four concrete steps to the laundry room, shedding his now-noxious shoes. It still wasn’t quite noon, and it was Saturday—there was a chance, at least, that his parents were still in bed, or watching TV together—

“Conor? Is that you?”

He couldn’t even summon the energy to swear inside his own thoughts.

“Come into the living room—look who’s here!”

For a moment, some fuzzy, befuddled part of him poked its head up and wondered Ashleigh? But no—even with his brain running on fumes, he could hear that his mother’s tone was all wrong for that. This was how she sounded when there was A Guest In This House, Young Man, and Won’t You Please Be On Your Best Behavior? Miss Helen, from next door, or his mother’s friend Miss Julie…

“Coming,” he croaked. He peeled back his soiled jacket, briefly considered trying to wash his face and found that no part of himself felt like mustering to do so. Drawing in a heavy, resigned breath, he walked through the kitchen and turned the corner into the living room—

Probably his heart didn’t actually stop. Probably it didn’t even skip a beat (not that Conor was sure he knew what that was supposed to feel like).

But something tore through him, as his eyes landed on the slim figure sitting across from his mother, something that felt an awful lot like the time they’d grabbed the electrified fence on the border of Mr. Plumblee’s pasture. He was aware that he had stiffened, straightened—that his eyes had gone wide—that his jaw was suddenly clenched and his pulse was thundering in his ears—

It was Ms. Palmano.

Ms. Palmano was in his house.

His teacher, Ms. Palmano, was here, in his house, sitting across from his mother, sipping tea.

There was a moment of spinning panic in which his poor overworked brain skipped straight past the impossibility of the situation and leapt, horrified, to the pair of soiled boxers that lived in the cramped space between his bed and the wall, a mad, mindless fear that she had been in there, that she’d seen, somehow, or—or smelled, that she knew, that they both knew, oh god, his mother, too—

His mother was talking.

She was talking, and he should probably pay attention to that, but his eyes were glued on what was she doing here, though—

“…Conor?”

He blinked—shook his head—forced himself to focus.

His mother’s eyes were gentle, and creased with laughter. “Too many Snickers,” she murmured, with a sidelong glance at how, what, why—

“A noble tradition,” said the dry voice of his teacher, coming from the face of his teacher, attached to the body of his teacher which was definitely there, right there, sitting on his couch in defiance of all reason.

“As I was saying—now that you seem to be here with us—guess who shops at the same Food City!”

Conor’s eyes tore away from Ms. Palmano, landed on his mother. “Uh,” he said. “…she does?”

For some reason, both grownups laughed.

“We ran into each other in the cheese aisle,” his mother said, waving him into his father’s armchair. He limped over and sank into it, the leather cool against the back of his arms, his neck. “She’s been right around the corner this whole time! Moved in last June—into that lovely little house with the green shutters over on Aspen Avenue. And since she’s the first teacher you’ve said anything good about since Carol Browning back in second grade…”

She trailed off, and shrugged, as if to say of course, it’s COMPLETELY NORMAL, that’s totally enough of a reason for me to bring your TEACHER into our HOUSE—

“I’ll confess, I had an ulterior motive,” Ms. Palmano broke in. Her voice took on a slightly different tone, a more elevated cadence. “‘In every corner of the humble house a memory; in every nick and scuff upon the walls a story—in the shape of his family I at last perceived the boundaries of the mold into which he had been grown, and in tasting the soil of his roots the tree of him made sudden sense.’”

There was a long silence—confused, on his mother’s part; expectant, on Ms. Palmano’s; reluctant, on Conor’s.

Why.

Finally, he spoke.

“Uh. Yours?” he said.

She grinned. His mother quirked an eyebrow.

“She gives us quotes,” Conor explained, feeling as if the room around him were spinning. “We have to guess if they’re real or not.”

“Tsk, tsk,” said his teacher, still grinning. “I hope I never said real—I wouldn’t want you thinking that a given thought is fake just because no one else thought it before. But yes.” She shifted her gaze back to Conor’s mother. “Your son is quite good at the game; I don’t know if I’ve managed to slip any past him, yet.”

“Fascinating,” his mother replied. “We’ve always been very proud of Conor’s intellect, but I don’t know if we’ve ever thought of him as being particularly…literary.”

“One need not be well-read to have the soul of a reader.”

“Which reminds me—is it true that you don’t assign any reading at all? I would have thought that reading lists were required by the state…”

Conor felt his brow furrow as the conversation continued, the two women batting sentences back and forth as if playing ping-pong. They were doing that thing that grownups did, where their voices got all on-purposey, and they started saying words that didn’t quite mean what they meant, expecting other people to figure out the riddle. It was standard procedure for his mother, but it was downright odd to hear Ms. Palmano doing it. Like she’d suddenly started speaking Japanese…

If it had just been Miss Helen, or some other ordinary visitor, now would have been the time to slip out of the room, or to let his attention wander completely, but the weird sideways words were about him, or at least they seemed to be. It was like he wasn’t really all the way there—like he was on the other side of the house, overhearing.

“—no exaggeration, one of the students whose adult writing I’m most excited to see.”

“Mmmm,” said Conor’s mother, her lips thinning just a bit as she lowered her cup. “I would hope that would be reflected in his grades, somehow. Last I checked, I think you’re giving him a B. A low B.”

Conor groaned aloud. Neither of them seemed to notice.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say I’m giving him any sort of grade at all,” Ms. Palmano countered, her voice somehow reminding him of Devon. “The specific number or letter is entirely under Conor’s control—moreso than you might think. But your son’s grade does reflect the fact that he has more potential as a writer than his final drafts reveal. Many young people don’t know when to stop revising, and let the words speak for themselves.”

That last sentence was extra crisp, and there followed a stretching sort of silence, and Conor looked up from where he’d been staring to see both women looking at him, indecipherable expressions on their faces—

—and only then did his sluggish brain inform him that where he’d been staring was, in fact, Ms. Palmano, and more specifically the parts of her that lay above her belt and below her chin, and furthermore that he’d been staring in that general direction for maybe as long as half a minute—

He flushed crimson. “May, um,” he stammered. “May I be excused?”

Again they both laughed, silver and tinkling, and Conor felt his flush darken. He was used to his mother making fun of him, mostly good-naturedly, and he was used to Ms. Palmano’s poking and prodding, but something about the combination of the two felt sharper, meaner—

“Oh, why don’t you show Ms. Palmano your room?”

Again the image of his dirty boxers flashed unbidden, and he shot a searing glare at his mother—she was baiting him, had to be, there was no way she couldn’t know that he wouldn’t want his teacher in his room without any chance to—to—to make it ready, first—

Ms. Palmano rescued him. “Oh,” she said airily, “it’s nice of you to offer, but really, I do have to get going. Plus it’s always good to leave a reason to come back, wouldn’t you say? Now that we know that we’re neighbors. I’ll have to have you over for coffee sometime, to return the favor—”

His teacher rose smoothly from her chair, took one more sip of tea, and placed the teacup back down on its saucer with a soft clink. For a moment, it seemed like the whole ordeal might be over, but then his mother stood, too, and together the pair of them lingered, saying more words, and more words, and more words—

“—course. Conor, would you show her to the restroom, please?”

At the sound of his name, he started, realizing that he’d been staring again and silently cursing at himself. “Uh,” he said, coming to his feet, thankful beyond measure that his pants lay flat and untented. “Sure? It’s, um. This way.”

He turned and stepped into the kitchen, leading my English teacher, Mom, honestly, what were you THINKING down the hallway, stopping in front of the bathroom door. “Here,” he said, gesturing, and as Ms. Palmano stepped forward he turned to go further, to escape to the sanctuary of his bedroom where they wouldn’t be able to get at him, where he could lock the door and let himself fall apart—

“Conor.”

He looked down at the sleeve of his shirt, caught between her finger and thumb, which had brushed for just the briefest of moments against the skin of his upper arm. Her nails were painted a soft, vibrant purple, her voice low and quiet and suddenly human again as she leaned toward him.

“I’m very sorry,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean to. Your mother—she was quite insistent, and I didn’t realize—”

She paused, and he looked up at her face, at the splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the familiar half-frown that meant she was trying to find just the right words to express a particularly complicated thought.

“I didn’t mean to,” she repeated. “It won’t happen again. I’ll say no next time. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, I just wanted to see—”

She broke off for a second time, shook her head tightly, let go of Conor’s sleeve and straightened. “Sorry.”

And then she vanished into the bathroom, her hips swaying, nudging the door shut behind her with a click.

What.

There should have been more, but there wasn’t. There was nothing left in Conor’s brain except that one, lone word, soft and deflated. He stood in the hallway for long seconds, not waiting, not thinking, just—not moving. It wasn’t until he heard his mother bustling around in the kitchen, realized what it would look like if she saw—like he was standing there listening—

He turned and shuffled toward his bedroom. His teacher had spoken to him like a kid, there at the end—spoken to him as a kid, apologized to him as if to an equal. It was the mirror image of what had happened with Mrs. Falhanner, both of them letting something slip—

Conor stopped dead in the doorway.

Strangely enough, this time his body scarcely reacted at all. There was no rush of adrenaline, no urge to scream. Just a quiet, rueful settling as the pieces fell into place, everything making perfect sense in retrospect.

Of course.

Ashleigh hadn’t been at home, or at school, or at the plaza, or anywhere else, because he was here, right here—sitting on the edge of Conor’s bed, looking as if he’d been there for hours. His clothes were filthy, his eyes rimmed with red, his face streaked with old, dried tears. He looked up as Conor stepped over the threshold, watched silently as Conor closed the door and lowered himself into the rolly chair by the desk.

Structural integrity at three percent.

They were a reflex, those words—a code, a catch phrase, not really a thought. It was his standard warning to himself, when some part of him noticed that he was compromised—that he was about to make a mistake, that whatever he was considering should not be attempted in his current state.

I can’t do this, he thought.

But that was the thing about flash floods, and earthquakes, and active shooter situations, date rapists and best friends kissing you and Guyler fucking Stevens showing up out of nowhere while you were high—disasters didn’t care about your readiness, didn’t wait for a convenient moment, didn’t stop just because you were broken and empty and hadn’t slept in a day and a half.

(That was the whole point behind Conor’s method—to try to make himself ready for anything, at any time. He would have laughed, if he’d had the energy for it.)

Ashleigh spoke.

“Your window was unlocked.”

Conor nodded.

“You were out looking for me.”

Conor nodded again.

“I left my phone at home. Mom tracks it.”

Conor nodded a third time. Ashleigh’s voice was—

Colorless.

Grey. Faded. Translucent. Like he wasn’t really there, either.

Seconds passed. Something in Conor twitched, irritable.

Steady.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

His best friend looked back at him through heavy, guarded eyes.

“No.”

At least he didn’t lie.

Conor tilted his head, weighing his next move. From the hallway, another world away, he heard the toilet flush, realized that the adrenaline from the shock of Ms. Palmano’s presence had faded entirely, leaving him wrapped in a thick, blurring fog.

“Me neither.”

Ashleigh gnawed at his lip and said nothing, and the nothing was oddly infuriating—what had been a twitch of irritation swelling, kindling into anger, burning through Conor’s exhaustion and leaving behind black, bitter resentment.

I can’t do this, I can not do this, why the fuck are you even HERE if you don’t have anything to SAY—

Conor stayed silent, kept his face still. Kept his balance, it felt like—as if he’d been walking along a rail and a sudden wind had almost blown him off. He realized for the first time that there were drops in this conversation, drops on either side, places to fall—that part of having structural integrity at three percent was that things could go wrong very, very quickly, and that if he fell there might not be an easy way to pull himself back up.

Steady. Rule four.

“Want to talk about it?” Ashleigh asked, clearly not wanting to, his voice still dead and half not-there, and this time Conor felt two different winds spring up—one of them the same fuck you as before, and the other an anguished reaching, a desperate pull toward his friend, his best friend, Ashleigh was hurting, Ashleigh needed help—

“Do you?” he asked quietly, still fighting to keep his balance.

The other boy’s face twitched—twisted, briefly, like a fishhook had caught at the corner of his mouth. He turned away, looking out through Conor’s window, at the trees shedding their leaves in the backyard.

“Didn’t figure I had a choice,” Ashleigh muttered dully. “Figured you’d corner me one way or another. Might as well get it over with.”

More winds, but he was ready for them now, knew how to brace himself.

Trying to make me angry? Or—or guilty? Trying to make me feel bad?

Or some kind of reverse psychology, maybe. Or maybe not trying anything at all—maybe just tired and hurt and lonely and stupid.

(That much, Conor could understand.)

It was strange, this place where he was standing—this narrow path between wholly different conversations. To one side, just a step away, there was anger, frustration, recrimination—all of the words that Ashleigh so richly deserved, for not trusting him, not telling him—

(And then, last night, not asking him.)

—and on the other side, the old, familiar path, patience and compassion and solidarity, letting it slide, letting all of it slide, he always let all of it slide because at the end of the day they were friends, best friends, isn’t that what friends do, isn’t that what friends are for—

No.

No to either, no to both. Conor didn’t know if it was because he was tired, or because they’d gone too far—because he was too angry, or because he had too little trust in his own anger—because he needed Ashleigh too much—

He didn’t know why, couldn’t make the dots connect inside his own head. But for whatever reason, he couldn’t bear any of the options he could see, had no stomach for fighting or helping or comforting or any of it. So he simply hung on.

“What do you mean?” he asked, after the winds died down again.

(It was the only question he’d been able to think of that didn’t point anywhere—that didn’t lock in its own answer simply by being asked.)

The other boy turned back from the window, his expression darkening. “I mean,” he said. “It’s not like you were going to just…let it go, right?”

Conor tilted his head. Ashleigh was poking him, provoking him, which meant that on some level he wanted Conor to be provoked, to respond as if somebody had just poked him—

“Do you want me to?” he asked slowly.

“What?”

“Do you want me to let it go?”

Ashleigh’s eyes narrowed. “What is this?” he said, a hint of a snarl blackening the edges of the dull, defeated grey.

“I don’t know, Ash,” Conor answered honestly. “I don’t have a plan.”

A silence fell between them, stretching for maybe a dozen breaths.

“Uh,” he said finally. “So. Um. Do you want me to let it go?”

“Doesn’t matter what I want,” Ashleigh said, his voice colorless once more.

Two paths, two paths—of course it matters—well, fuck you, then—

“Why not?” Conor asked.

Another glare. “What are you doing?”

Nothing.

Conor shrugged. “I don’t know,” he repeated. “You—you keep saying stuff I don’t understand, so…I’m asking?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop that. Stop—you’re messing with me.”

A flicker of fire, that time. More than a flicker—a flash, a flare, like the time they’d filled a tennis ball with strike-anywhere matchheads. The other boy had stiffened on the bed—straightened slightly, fingers curling, mouth twisting like he was trying to tongue something out from between his teeth.

Conor took a long, slow breath. “Ashleigh,” he said, making his voice as serious as he knew how to. “I swear to god I am not messing with you. I just—I don’t know. Last night—and then after—something else happened, after you left. Something big. And I kind of need to talk to you about it. And I didn’t get any sleep, couldn’t sleep, and I spent all morning looking for you, and—I dunno.”

He shrugged. “I tried to figure out what I was supposed to do. What I’d say to you, once I found you. I really did try. But.”

Ashleigh said nothing. Just continued to glower, suspicious, his eyes searching Conor’s face, looking for—

What?

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter what you want?” Conor pressed.

“I mean that it doesn’t matter.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it doesn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t.”

“Why the f—”

Conor cut himself off.

Breathe. Balance.

“It matters,” he said, after a long pause. “To me. What you want. It matters to me.”

Ashleigh shrugged, dismissive, casual—almost cruelly indifferent—and Conor felt another gust of wind, felt the tug of gravity on one side. “What does shrug mean?” he demanded, not quite managing to keep his voice steady.

“It means you’re not in charge.”

That brought Conor up short.

“Who is in charge?” he asked carefully.

Ashleigh shrugged again. “Not you,” he said flatly.

Conor scrubbed at his eyes, feeling tireder and stupider than ever. Last night it had all happened so fast, faster than he could follow, too fast for him to stop it, to do anything but watch as the train derailed and burned. Now, everything was happening so slowly, the conversation dragging out, they’d been talking for what felt like hours and they still hadn’t even started—

“Ash,” he said slowly. “You know it doesn’t—you have to know it doesn’t bother me that you’re g—”

“I’M NOT GAY, I’M ASHLEIGH.”

The words were like a gun going off, shockingly loud and sudden in the tiny, intimate space of the bedroom. Conor jumped, flinched, adrenaline once more flooding his veins as his chair came up against the desk and several objects went tumbling. On the bed, the other boy was suddenly animated, energized, his whole body trembling, his eyes two blazing fires.

Seconds passed.

“What—”

Conor broke off.

There were footsteps in the hallway.

No. No no no, not now, I can’t, I don’t, I CAN’T—

“Conor?”

His father’s voice, stern and commanding. Conor locked eyes with Ashleigh, searching—

“Conor, open the door.”

And some part of him, some fully automatic part of him woke up, took over, stepped over the rubble and seized control.

“I can’t,” Conor’s voice called out—because the conversation wasn’t over, yet, couldn’t be over, that had been the first sign of—of anything, and he wasn’t ready to let it go.

“You can,” his father growled back.

“I’m not going to.”

Shocked silence.

“That’s Ashleigh in there with you?”

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

“Nobody.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

What kind of a question—

“Yes.”

“The two of you are having a fight?”

Over on the bed, Ashleigh made a low, rattling sound, like laughter if laughter could die.

“I don’t know,” Conor answered. “It’s tough to say.”

Another long pause.

“Conor—”

“You’re not helping, Dad.”

Another silence, this one coiled and dangerous. Ashleigh had—unplugged, again, had leaned back onto his hands and was studying the ceiling.

“Conor—”

“You can ground me later.”

“Conor—”

“And you can add more days to make up for this sentence right here but Dad. Please. Leave us alone. Now.”

A shorter silence, and then—

“This is not acceptable behavior, young man.”

“Didn’t say it was.”

Two heartbeats.

“There is not to be any more shouting. None. None at all, do you understand me? Or I will get the key and I will open this door.”

(The door was not locked.)

“Yes, sir.”

“Ashleigh?”

The other boy twitched—glanced at the door—looked back at Conor.

“He says yes,” Conor called out.

There was another pause, in which Conor’s imagination suddenly showed him his father’s face, out there in the hall, on the other side of the door, twisting, uncertain, angry—

“When he leaves, you come straight to my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

One more silence, and then footsteps, slowly fading.

Conor’s heart was racing, pounding in his chest so hard that his chair was perceptibly moving, shifting back and forth by a hair. His mouth was dry, his jaw trembling. He had never—never, not once—had a conversation like that, with his father. Never told his father no—not asked, not negotiated, not convinced, but just flat-out told.

And it had worked.

(For the moment, at least. There would be hell to pay, later.)

He realized he hadn’t taken a breath in almost half a minute, and as he dragged in a lungful of air through his nose, the world seemed to tilt, a slow-motion lurch that made him tighten his grip on the armrests of his chair. He was coming very near to his limit—not the limit of what felt okay, but his true, actual limit, the point at which either his mind or his body or both would simply shut down.

“Sorry,” said Ashleigh from the bed, sounding almost like he meant it.

“Don’t tell me sorry, make it worth it,” Conor snapped.

And then:

“So—fine. You’re not gay. You’re Ashleigh. Sure. What the fuck does it mean, though?”

“It means you don’t get it.”

“Then tell me, asshat. Explain. Pretend like I’m your best fucking friend or something.”

Hey, Conor, I think you might’ve fallen off the rail.

But if so, he didn’t care anymore, could not remember why he’d been trying so hard not to in the first place.

“You think I can?” Ashleigh shot back. “You think we’d be sitting here right now, if I knew how?”

“Fucking try. Or does it all of a sudden matter what you want?”

It was a cheap shot, and Conor knew it, and he let it fly anyway—felt a savage satisfaction as the barb landed exactly where he’d aimed. The other boy’s cheeks flushed, his face twisting and untwisting.

“You,” Ashleigh growled, his teeth clenched. “You think it’s just—”

He broke off. Conor waited.

“Just because you—”

Again, Conor said nothing.

“You wouldn’t even—”

That’s right. Smoke him out.

The heat in Conor’s chest was falling, his body calming as the adrenaline burned off, and meanwhile Ashleigh was ramping up, his fingers twitching again, energy gathering in the muscles of his arms, his legs.

“Even if I—gah!”

The other boy wrenched his gaze away, squeezed his eyes shut, pulled at his hair with both hands, and flopped down onto his back on Conor’s bed, making the lamp on the bedside table wobble.

Fucking FINALLY.

Finally, Ashleigh was here—was fully in the room, recognizably present, no longer hiding behind four inches of bullshit bulletproof fake indifference.

“You don’t have to try fast,” Conor clarified, the last dregs of anger still edging his voice.

“Gee, thanks, coach,” Ashleigh muttered, from underneath the pillow that he’d pulled over his face.

Time passed. Maybe half a minute, maybe more. Conor’s heart had slowed, was no longer rocking his chair back and forth. On the bed, Ashleigh didn’t move. For a moment, Conor wondered if maybe the deadness was back—if the other boy had fled yet again. But when he finally spoke—

“I’m just going to talk from under here.”

—there was still color in his voice.

(Not much of it, and it was washed-out, diluted. Half dead.)

(But half dead also meant half alive.)

“Sure,” Conor said.

There followed another long silence, during which Conor’s brain twitched and flailed like a dying chicken, trying uselessly to predict the other boy’s next words, to prepare responses to them—

“So, obviously I’m in love with you.”

And there it was. Not dead like his earlier words, but still cold, offhand—almost brutally casual, as if Ashleigh was trying to shrug it off, downplay it—

As if?

That was exactly what he was doing.

And yet somehow the words still hit, still landed. There was an audible whoosh as the air left Conor’s lungs, and a heaviness in the silence that followed. Conor found himself—sharpening, maybe, sobering—the fog clearing slightly, everything coming into focus. He was suddenly aware of Ashleigh as a physical presence—his body, laid out across the mattress; his shins, dangling over the edge of the bed; the toes of his sneakers just brushing the carpet.

Okay.

Okay.

So Ashleigh loved him.

Was in love with him—it had been said, and heard, and now Conor needed to say something back, the other boy was waiting and Conor had a duty to—to acknowledge it, somehow, complete the handshake—

“I was going to tell you on the roof,” Ashleigh continued. “Before school, I mean. On the last day. That’s why I—”

He broke off. “But I chickened out.”

Conor hesitated, unsure—

“I don’t like it.”

Conor blinked.

“Uh,” he said. “What?”

“I don’t like it,” Ashleigh repeated, the pillow still covering his face. “It fucking sucks.”

There was a long pause.

“Oh,” Conor said. “Um. …sorry?”

The pillow flew at his face far faster than his overworked brain could follow. He caught it after it hit, pulled it down to see that Ashleigh had barely moved, was still lying in the exact same spot, now with Conor’s other pillow giving him cover.

“You should be,” he grumbled, and as far as Conor could tell from his tone, even Ashleigh might not have been able to say whether he really meant it or not.

But at least there was a thread, now. The conversation was about something, now—something Conor could work with, could pull on.

Gently.

“Why—”

No. Why was too big, too open-ended. He needed something small. Simple. Bite-sized.

“Is it, uh. Does it suck because I’m, you know. A boy?”

The pillow shifted side to side as Ashleigh shook his head beneath it.

“Is it because I’m not—I mean, because I don’t—”

Conor winced, tried to backpedal. “I mean, it’s not that—I do love you, Ash, you have to know I love you, you’re my best friend on Earth, it’s just—”

Snap.

The other boy had snapped his fingers, and now his hand was raised, palm up, his fingers waggling in a come here gesture.

What—

Oh.

Conor tossed the pillow he was holding, and Ashleigh’s hand snagged it out of the air and threw it straight back, hard.

Okay, fine.

So it wasn’t that.

“What’s the problem, then?” he asked bluntly.

The other boy said nothing for a long, long time. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, and less dead-sounding, and also more hurt.

“I don’t want—”

A pause, as if his breath had hitched.

“You don’t see it?” Ashleigh asked softly, sounding as if he was suddenly very, very close to tears. “Have you—I don’t know. Tried? To figure it out?”

Conor sighed. “Ash, honest to god, there’s not one single thing I’ve spent more time on since—”

All things considered, it’s probably time to stop tiptoeing around it.

“—since you beat the everloving shit out of Guyler Stevens for no good oh my god he called you a faggot, didn’t he, that motherfucker—”

A single, choked sob.

“Jesus, sorry, I just—okay—”

But wait, Guyler calls Ashleigh faggot all the time, literally every time, why was that day different, no, wait, this isn’t important—

Unless it was?

God dammit, why is this happening NOW—

“Okay, sorry. I—I’ve tried, Ash. I don’t get it.”

Another pause.

“Yeah, but have you tried, though?” the other boy asked, his voice still quavering. “Like—like what if I was some stupid building you were trying to figure out how to climb, or something. And you actually gave a shit. Have you, you know. Tried.”

For a moment, Conor felt like shouting—that he couldn’t, not now, that there was nothing left, that none of this was fair and why couldn’t Ashleigh just TELL HIM—

But he held on, kept his balance, let that first reaction blow past and waited to see what else would arise. And as the question actually sank in, he found himself feeling suddenly unsure.

Unsure, and embarrassed—maybe even a little bit ashamed.

Had he tried? Really, actually tried—as if it mattered, as if he cared, as if he were going to turn the results in to Ms. Palmano?

Versus, say, just being kind of vaguely angry with him for being weird and unreasonable and not making any sense.

Well, no—it had been worse than that, a lot worse, Ashleigh had been a straight-up asshole for a while there and it wasn’t like he’d been easy to be around the rest of the time—

Almost like he was dealing with some heavy shit, maybe?

Okay, fair, but also it wasn’t Conor’s fault that Ashleigh had shut Conor out, the other boy hadn’t had to deal with any of this alone, that had been his own damn choice and the kiss thing was still bullshit, that was not how you come out to your best friend—

Over on the bed, there was a soft sniff.

“Do you want me to?” Conor asked tentatively. “Try, I mean. Now.”

“I keep telling you it doesn’t matter what I want and you keep not. LISTENING.”

The words were quiet, not shouted, and even quieter through the pillow, but Conor’s eyes still jerked toward the door in sheer reflex, his heart quickening a little.

Okay.

Okay.

Try.

Whatever this was, Ashleigh clearly wasn’t going to just explain it.

Because it hurts too much?

Because he doesn’t actually know, himself?

Because he thinks I’ll think it’s stupid?

Conor shook his head. There were too many possible reasons—too many plausible reasons, too many justifications that all felt like Ashleigh.

(Something tickled at the back of Conor’s mind.)

I don’t like it, the other boy had said. It fucking sucks.

…there was something there, maybe, but he couldn’t quite grab it. He looked over at the bed, feeling stupid all over again, the gears of his mind grinding against each other. If only this was all happening tomorrow, after he’d had a chance to sleep, to recover—

Don’t forget, after Ashleigh leaves you’ve got to talk to Dad.

One thousand years. This day was a thousand years long, he had been born here and died here and he had never left this room and he had been reincarnated fifty times in this conversation alone and it was like Ms. Palmano said the Buddhists said, it was all suffering—

Focus.

Ashleigh had blown up exactly twice in the conversation so far. Once when Conor had said he was gay—

But he is gay. Isn’t he?

He could be bi, maybe?

But then he would’ve said “I’m not gay, I’m bi.” Which is not what he said.

—whatever, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the pattern, the line between that and the other time he’d blown up—the quieter one, just now—

It doesn’t matter what I want.

That’s what Ashleigh had said.

Because Conor…wasn’t gay? Because Conor wasn’t going to be his boyfriend?

He said that wasn’t it.

He’d thrown a pillow, actually.

He threw a pillow that wasn’t it.

…hopeless. The whole thing was hopeless, he maybe couldn’t have figured it out if his brain was working, especially since Ashleigh was digging in his heels and not helping—

“Ash,” he said slowly. “I think I’ve asked, like, forty-seven different questions, maybe, and you’ve dodged like forty-three of them. Can you just tell me what you mean? Or at least tell me why you won’t tell me?”

The pillow was still, as if considering. And then—

“Who’s the last person you jerked off to?”

(The memory arrived with a force that was almost violent—the two of them, side-by-side on the very bed where Ashleigh was now—)

“What?” Conor said, stalling for time.

(—pants by their ankles, sheets carefully arranged to cover everything, It’s Perfectly Normal propped open in the twelve inches of space they’d carefully maintained between themselves the whole time—)

“Did you not hear me, or—”

“I heard you.”

“Then spill. Who?”

“Who’s the last person you—”

Too late, Conor’s limping, feeble brain realized, cut off the words with a surge of horror.

“You,” Ashleigh answered tonelessly. “Duh.”

And for a moment it was real, too real, with the memory so fresh and his friend’s body stretched out right there in front of him—impossible to stop his brain from imagining it, imagining Ashleigh lying in the dark in his own bed, imagining Conor—

(Conor could smell him. Could smell them both—the smell of both of them together, the end-of-day smell after hours and hours of climbing around, warm and gross and familiar.)

“Your turn.”

Conor opened his mouth, blushed, hesitated.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“What?”

“You don’t want to tell me.”

It was true.

(And that was surprising, now that Ashleigh pointed it out.)

“Look, it’s not because you’re—”

“Duh,” Ashleigh said.

Okay, I have no idea what’s happening.

“Okay,” Conor said aloud. “I have no idea what’s—”

“It’s her, isn’t it?”

There was a long silence, during which half of Conor tried to force through a denial, found itself blocked by the other half, and fought a brief and furious battle before realizing that it was too late, that too many seconds had already passed.

“Okay, fine,” he said, his voice brittle. “Go ahead.”

“Go ahead what?”

“Go ahead and make fun of me.”

“Why? I get it.”

Conor blinked. “You…you do?”

Ashleigh’s arms moved, pulling the pillow away from his face, and he propped himself up on his elbows, fixing Conor with a soft, almost excruciatingly gentle gaze.

“I’ve known you since third grade,” he said, simply.

Conor blinked again.

“The thing is,” Ashleigh continued, sounding more tired than Conor had ever heard him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Conor countered.

“Exactly.”

“What?”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

But Ashleigh had vanished again, had fallen back to the mattress and retreated once more behind the pillow.

Conor’s resentment was back, welling up like a sewer overflowing. He was sick of Ashleigh’s games, his recalcitrance, the way the other boy was choosing to make the conversation good for himself while hanging Conor out to dry—

No, while jerking Conor around, he wasn’t treating Conor like an equal, like a friend, he was puppetmastering this whole thing and banking on his own sadness and Conor’s sympathy to get away with it—

But even as Conor felt his fingers tightening once more on the armrests of his chair, something did finally click into place—something he didn’t quite have words for, yet, but it undercut the anger, tugging him sideways.

Why didn’t I…?

Well, obviously at least part of the story was the way Ashleigh had been throwing every wrench he could into their friendship—

But no. No—even if everything had been fine between them, even if that last awful day of summer had never happened, he couldn’t really say, with a straight face, that he would have told the other boy about his burgeoning crush on their English teacher. It was too—too—

…private?

Sacred.

Sacred was the word, was the right word, it felt ridiculous to think it under the circumstances but it was true regardless. And Ashleigh—if there was one thing Ashleigh did not do, could not seem to comprehend and might, in all seriousness, despise—

Conor looked down at the battered, filthy shape of his best friend, lying motionless on the bed, his head still hidden beneath the pillow.

No, Ashleigh and sacred did not get along. And there was something here that Conor did not want touched, would not have wanted the other boy to see, to know about, the jokes would have been good-natured but they still would have been jokes—

It’s boobs, isn’t it?

Ashleigh shifted on the bed, and the rest of the thought unraveled, Conor’s poor exhausted brain unable to draw it back together. Something about irreverence, and kryptonite…

So, obviously I’m in love with you.

(Said with deliberate nonchalance.)

…but it was gone. Gone, and with it Conor’s sense of direction, of purpose. He dropped his head into his hands, scrubbed at his eyes, glanced blearily over at the clock. It read 12:15, and he didn’t know, had absolutely no earthly idea what it had said the last time he’d looked, nor how long the two of them had been sitting there, nor how long they had left.

“What now?” he asked dully.

“I’m sorry,” the other boy answered, from under the pillow, his own voice sounding no less worn-out. “I want to just—can we just go back?”

Conor frowned. “You mean, pretend you didn’t—”

“No, that’s—I mean, yes, sorry about that too, but that’s not what—”

He broke off, and Conor’s frown deepened.

Time passed.

“Ash?”

The other boy grunted.

“What were you—I mean, what did you mean?”

“I give up,” said the voice beneath the pillow. “It didn’t work. Control-Z.”

“What didn’t work?”

“Forget it. Doesn’t matter. Didn’t pan out.”

It felt like Conor’s entire body was frowning, now, his muscles drawing tight around his confusion.

“What didn’t work, Ashleigh?”

The other boy lifted his hand off the bed and waved it vaguely around.

“What didn’t work, Ashleigh?”

Both hands, this time, in a what do you want from me? sort of shrug.

“Ashleigh.”

“Your mom.”

“Ashleigh.”

Silence.

“Ashleigh.”

“Truth or dare.”

“Truth.”

“What do I have to say to get you to drop it?”

More silence. Conor could feel his anger heating up again, there was something here and Ashleigh knew it, was—was trying to hide it, to shrug it off, but he’d messed up, had let the mask slip for just a second, and for once Conor had managed to not-miss-it.

“I’m not going to drop it,” he said, the words like steel against flint.

“Why are you doing this?”

A note of pleading, a hint of panic—

“Because I think you want me to.”

The words had come from nowhere, had emerged from Conor’s mouth without any associated thought or intent, and it was only after they had been said that he heard them, himself—held them up against the previous hour and noticed how well they fit.

“Right?” Conor pressed, feeling his way forward.

He was here, he came here, he was waiting all morning.

“If I’m wrong, you can just tell me to fuck off.”

“Fuck off.”

The words came swiftly, without hesitation, but they were hollow, unconvincing.

“Really?” Conor asked quietly. “Do you really, actually, for-real want me to fuck off?”

“Yes.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“Then say the safeword.”

The silence that followed stretched, and stretched, and stretched, as Conor tried and failed to imagine what was going on inside of the other boy’s head, he was clearly torn about something, but what it might be he had no idea—

“You’re going to be mad,” Ashleigh whispered.

“So?”

“I can’t—I don’t want you to—”

“To what?”

More silence.

…Ashleigh didn’t want him to be mad?

Since when?

Ashleigh had never cared what Conor thought. Cared for Conor, sure, but they had fought and argued over practically everything since the very first time they’d locked shins on the soccer field. Conor couldn’t think of a single time when Ashleigh had held his tongue or changed his mind just because Conor thought differently, just because Conor might disapprove—

Oh.

Oh, shit.

The pieces were falling into place, suddenly, had not yet fully clicked but were coming together, the overall shape visible to Conor for the very first time.

That was before.

Ashleigh, who was aloof and invincible, who had always been untouchable precisely because he did not give a single fuck—

So, obviously I’m in love with you.

It fucking sucks.

I’m giving up, it didn’t work.

Somewhere inside of Conor, he could feel pressure building, feel the temperature rising—

If Ashleigh had started to feel, about Conor, the way that Conor had started to feel about Ms. Palmano—if Conor’s opinions, his approval, had started to matter to him, even a little bit…

And then he tried to—to—to—

“You tried to stop caring,” Conor said quietly. “About what I think.”

He was amazed at the steadiness of his own voice. Over on the bed, the pillow shifted as Ashleigh nodded underneath.

But he couldn’t. I wouldn’t let him, and anyway he didn’t want to, not really, not all the way…

“But it didn’t work.”

Another nod.

“You do care about what I think.”

Another.

“But you wish you didn’t.”

Stillness.

“Ashleigh?”

The other boy’s fingers had curled into fists, pulling on Conor’s sheets, the knuckles whitening.

(Inside Conor, the pressure was still rising.)

“Ash—”

“I said I was sorry,” the other boy whispered.

And the pressure inside Conor doubled, then—tripled—rose to a horrible, intolerable peak and then kept rising because there was nowhere for it to go, no way for him to let it out—

“The thing is,” Ashleigh said, and it sounded like he was crying, now, crying underneath the pillow. “The thing is, you’re going to—to—to this, it’s going to be the same, but it’s going to be at somebody else, fucking Jennifer probably, you’re going to be off having this—this whole other life and I’m not—I’ll just—it won’t have anything to do with me, I won’t be part of it. You—you won’t want me there, you won’t want me to see—”

Conor’s limbs were trembling, now, they were trembling and his face was hot but he couldn’t move, couldn’t think, he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he wasn’t supposed to shout but he was having a hard time remembering why.

“—and I don’t—I don’t want to give a shit, whatever, it’s fucking lame, I’m lame, I just want to g-g-go back to how it was before, but I can’t, one way or another it’s just—it’s just over, you’ll be at fucking prom or whatever and I’m just going to be stuck with this—this—this fucking hole, it didn’t used to be there, I don’t want it, nobody asked me if I wanted to want—”

“So you fixed it,” Conor heard himself say, and his own voice was like iron, like ice, cold and flat and glassy smooth. The other boy was still under the pillow, so he couldn’t see the way that Conor’s face was twisting, twisting, two opposing winds tearing at him like hurricanes.

On the one hand, he finally, finally, finally understood. There were no more mysteries, no more confusions—the why of all of Ashleigh’s bizarre, inscrutable, cruel behavior had finally been revealed.

And on the other—

He tried to kill our friendship.

Knowingly. Intentionally. Unilaterally. Had decided, all on his own, that the parts of himself that had fallen in love with Conor were a problem to be dealt with—had tried to burn those parts out of himself, and the effect that this would have on Conor hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t given him pause.

And then when that hadn’t worked, he’d just…routed around them.

And for months—for months!—Conor had been trying so hard—had been hanging on with every last scrap of patience, of resolve—doing everything he could to keep the thread of friendship alive, unaware that the other boy was doing exactly the opposite—

And now Ashleigh was sad because it hadn’t worked, had the sheer audacity to complain to Conor about how he couldn’t make himself stop caring—

Conor felt himself standing, watched as if from the outside as he stepped back and stood upright in the corner of the bedroom.

“Get out of my house,” he heard himself say, the words like ashes crumbling.

(It was the wrong move. The wrong moment to end the conversation, the wrong moment to make decisions, the wrong moment for anything. It wasn’t the end of anything—except for Conor’s own ability to think, to cope, to continue existing. He had—at last—reached his limit, the true and final end of his thin and fraying rope.)

The other boy sat up, bewildered, his face a wreck of snot and half-dried tears. “Wh—what?” he said.

“Get out of my house,” Conor heard himself repeat.

“Conor, wait—I’m trying to tell you I’m s—”

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” Conor heard himself bellow, and twenty seconds later, after the front door had slammed shut, he watched himself step out into the hallway and begin the long, slow walk to the office where his father stood in the doorway, waiting.